Guild Wars 2

0/20/20/0/30, with the shorter cd trait for swords. I like it.

Vargoth.3106:

However I did notice it works 100% of the time when I was bunker/beastmaster builds for some stupid reason.

Then you just got lucky since that has nothing to do with anything. The ability is severly bugged, pure and simple.

Atherakhia.4086:

Poor class design more than anything. Many classes aren’t given the tools to adequately compete so their only option is to stack on toughness and healing or not bother showing up. This then spirals out of control because other classes don’t bring anything to the table but burst, but even their burst isn’t sufficient against the amount of toughness, passive regen, and random healing to succeed; those classes don’t have a spec to function as a bunker, and they’re left out of the running entirely.

QFT.

I’d say the extreme burst of thieves gave birth to most of the bunker builds. People getting tired of going down in one second tried to counter.

It would be nice to have the ability to strip boons at all, without being forced into precision and specific sigils…

Durzlla.6295:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Durzlla.6295:

but now that we know it’s an AoE… that long charge up before he uses it now makes sense xD.

Huh?

Actually, that’s not new info at all?

Well that’s great that you knew this and didn’t bother letting anyone on the forums know or updating the wiki, but thank god you decided to tell us you knew it -now-.

Oh come on. The fact that pigs knockdown attack is an aoe attack has been know AND posted on this very forum plenty of times before.

If you happened to miss it, tough luck, but don’t try to be such a smartass about it.

Durzlla.6295:

but now that we know it’s an AoE… that long charge up before he uses it now makes sense xD.

Huh?

Actually, that’s not new info at all?

dragonhawk.3258:

My idea for a fix is a bit of a merger of different ideas here that dont include general AoE resistance (since the devs seem to be set against that).

1. General health boost to pets
2. Cooldown on pet swap reduced and death penalty greatly reduced.
a) Pet swap at 15 sec (10 with trait).
b) Death penalty reduced to 20-30 seconds).
3. Base pet damage reduced to around 15% of the rangers damage.
a) BM trait stats adjusted to boost pet up to 40% of ranger damage at 30 points.
4. Pet UI increased in size
5. Permanent stow button for traveling and jumping.
6. Permanent name change or at least loose the “juvenille” once tamed.
7. Fix F2 abilities so they are more instant and override any auto sequence of other abilities.

So let’s see now. More health without the ability to better heal pets is not a good solution, unless the health pool is boosted by 1000%. Not sure it’s good even then.

So you want our pets to do even less damage (3 above) without giving anything in return? Lousy suggestion.

Again a very nice and informative post by you, jubskie, very well done!

:)

fishybill.6908:

Just joined a soloq match of tpvp 6 mesmers 3 thieves and me an Engineer, this is getting ridiculous!

Tpvp is worse than it ever was, what can be done?

Just be glad you’re not a ranger, since you can expect yet another nerf next update. They sure like their topdogs here at Anet…

Targeting in this game is rather crappy tbh, and because of that, it benefits some classes more than others, mostly mesmers and thieves since they have the ability to make sure you drop them as your target.

daydream.2938:

If you look at people complaining about thief/mesmer. you will find the vast majority of them are hotjoin players. And very few, if any are top players.

I’d say that hotjoin, or casual players, outnumbers “top players” by a factor of 1000:1 or more, so yeah, Anet would be wise to listen in on these discussions if they want to appeal to the big masses. If not, then by all means keep balancing the game based on what’s going on in the very small group of “top players”.

Remorseless is good vs pve trash, crap for all other situations.

The trait is not in a good place when comparing it with other classes. Then the question is – are we yet again balanced, while all other classes are OP in this regard?

Chopps, here trolling or what? Eaten something bad today? Calm down or get lost.

Bran.7425:

Perhaps a middle ground approach for it would be to have the pet remove (not transfer) 3 condition every ten seconds.

I agree with this. It would be best if it the trait reverts back to how it was, but this is also a decent suggestion.

I’m not fully aware of how condition removal works on all the other classes, but do they also get punished for removing conditions like the ranger?

Shiren.9532:

Honestly, I don’t think the devs can (or are prepared to) do what needs to be done to make the pet mechanic viable while maintaining health diversity (read: cats and birds are also viable in dungeons) without turning the class into a ridiculously complex mess of micromanagement and inefficient outcomes. Consider how difficult many players find dodging attacks when they only have to worry about themselves, do you really think a dodge skill for the pet is going to be a working fix for this issue for most rangers? They then have to pay attention to the boss/mobs, their character’s position and their pet’s position – and then they have to command both themselves and their pet to dodge (often at the same time) not to mention the likelihood of having to manage two dodge bars (a ranger one and a pet one, they likely wouldn’t give you unlimited dodges for the pet). So micromanaging and resource management are the gameplay being pushed by that kind of design. A lot of us play the class for the AI companion, not a micromanaged companion. Micromanaging, while increasing the skill cap (in a certain way), isn’t going to solve the problem for a lot of rangers, and for many players it takes the class in a direction they don’t want to go in.

I am genuinely interested in why he thinks two rangers, through smart use of pet swap, two-manning bosses (many bosses can be soloed by multiple classes already, it just takes longer – in some cases not by much) is a bad thing, given the current meta we already have. I don’t want brand dead easy face tanks pets to trivialise boss fights, but I don’t see micromanagement as an appropriate solution and I do think there is a problem.

Amen!

If comparing the ranger class with the warrior class, some major questions pops up:

Why is the warrior normally more powerful than the ranger+pet combined despite being easier to play since you only got that one character to look out for? Shouldn’t rangers, that have to keep track and micromanage two characters at the same time, be rewarded for that in such manner that ranger+pet combined is way more powerful?

When this is not the case, why then should anyone really choose the ranger class over the warrior, other than the fact that they find the actual gameplay mechanics more fun (which is an ok criteria in and of itself)?

Good management of pets should be very rewarding, something that currently is next to impossible during many encounters no matter how good you are (or think you are!).

Keeping pets on passive can never be the solution, we need them out there all the time to be competitive – in all aspects of the game, and in all encounters.

It’s good to see my original query in the Dungeon patch thread grow into this, with lots of great feedback from both players and from you, Robert – thanks!

ManLove.2457:

Moment of Clarity, Signet of the Hunt, and Hilt Bash do not stack.

Also Master’s Bond grants +10 attribute points per stack (Max: 25 stacks) = + 250 to each primary stat (eg: power or toughness)

Hope I have been of some help.

Master’s Bond grants 10% of your current level per stack, so at level 80 that would be 8×25 = 200 points/attribute.

Aegis.9724:

i got used to it, now when i’m about to die i automatically look at my feets, looking for a comfy and even place, even on my non-ranger alts.

Level ground is not the issue here.

For some odd reason, the original thread where I posted this seems to have vanished, I’ll repost here:

*

Dear Robert Hrouda,

since you’re seemingly the man in charge when it comes to dungeons, would you kindly stop abusing broken mechanics that punishes certain classes, until the class devs have been able to actually fix these broken class mechanics?

Yes, I’m primarily talking about rangers, or rather, their pets.

By designing your dungeon encounters in such manner that one class in particular gets punished for a, in many ways, broken class mechanic, thereby abusing this weakness and making these encounters harder, is imho kinda cheap.

I think you’re fully aware of the issues I’m talking about here, right?

Until a fix for all the issues that involves pets has been pushed out to live servers, I strongly suggest you design your dungeons in such a way that no encounter abuses this broken mechanic.

You do realise that many rangers gets kicked out of groups just because of their class, or more so, because of the core mechanic that comes with this class?

So, in all fairness, if an encounter becomes a lot harder to deal with because of pets, or due to the fact that there’s simply no way to keep a pet alive during some encounters (and please remember, the ranger class is balanced around having their pet alive and working), then please stop designing your encounters in such a manner that they constantly put the ranger class at a major disadvantage!

Having issues with this? Then please go ahead and talk to the guys responsible for designing/balancing the classes about this. Just letting things go on in a broken state month after month is indeed very tiresome.

Thanks for reading.

Dear Robert Hrouda,

since you’re seemingly the man in charge when it comes to dungeons, would you kindly stop abusing broken mechanics that punishes certain classes, until the class devs have been able to actually fix these broken class mechanics?

Yes, I’m primarily talking about rangers, or rather, their pets.

By designing your dungeon encounters in such manner that one class in particular gets punished for a, in many ways, broken class mechanic, thereby abusing this weakness and making these encounters harder, is imho kinda cheap.

I think you’re fully aware of the issues I’m talking about here, right?

Until a fix for all the issues that involves pets has been pushed out to live servers, I strongly suggest you design your dungeons in such a way that no encounter abuses this broken mechanic.

You do realise that many rangers gets kicked out of groups just because of their class, or more so, because of the core mechanic that comes with this class?

So, in all fairness, if an encounter becomes a lot harder to deal with because of pets, or due to the fact that there’s simply no way to keep a pet alive during some encounters (and please remember, the ranger class is balanced around having their pet alive and working), then please stop designing your encounters in such a manner that they constantly put the ranger class at a major disadvantage!

Having issues with this? Then please go ahead and talk to the guys responsible for designing/balancing the classes about this. Just letting things go on in a broken state month after month is indeed very tiresome.

Thanks for reading.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

refining OGDeadHead idea

Replace F3 with pet dodge and return to me command.
F3 command has same cooldown as stamina usage and has 2 bars
Using F3 will make the pet evade all attacks as it rushes back to the ranger as long as a bar is used.
If no bar is avaiable to be used whilst F3 is used,the pet will just return to ranger and receive normal dmg along the way just like current F3

Basically its just giving a separate dodge button for ur pet

Ah yes, I think you’re indeed onto something really, really good here, and I very much approve of this idea – nice!

Leaf.3156:

You’ll have to learn to watch your pet.

Oh kitten not another l2p kittening post. I can manage both myself and my pet very fine thank you very much, after soon 1000 hours on my ranger alone, which covers all aspects of this game. Give me a kittening break.

Having pets dodge when we do would not be a good mechanic in any way for several reasons, here are just a few:

• You mostly need the dodges for yourself
• Having your pet dodge automatically when it was you that actually needed the dodge is a big waste in dps
• In chaotic fights, it’s hard having to keep full attention on dodging for your pet, while you yourself is busy staying alive and dodge incoming damage

I’d prefer to see something like this:

• Using “Return to me (F3)” would have the pet ‘dodge’ (maybe even twice in a row), then run back to its owner, perhaps even granting swiftness to the pet for a short time
  F3 could have an built in ability that clears snaring effects from the pet, on a cooldown (30 seconds maybe)
  OR, have the pet shadowstep back to its owner, add a 15-20 second cd on the shadowstep ability and if it’s not up, the pet runs back normally

• When in passive mode, pets would have some sort of evasive passive ability and/or damage mitigation, possibly even a high rate regen ability

ensoriki.5789:

It can be pretty outrageous.
Brb, ranger is nowhere in sight.
Come out of stealth, start fighting a mesmer. Here comes Fido making a mad dash for my kitten like I owe him money.

Rofl! Thanks, that post made my day – brilliant, just brilliant!

Laughing so hard my stomach hurts!

Even though this is how things should’ve been from the beginning, when talking about how pets reacts to thieves coming out of stealth, I’m sure the so called “balance team” among the devs finds it to op, and they will nerf it soonish.

Thank god for this change, long overdue.

killimandros.5087:

Hey guys, listen to this; we just got a huge buff versus thieves, no kidding :-) Why? Because of the fact their stealth now doesnt reset NPC’s (INCLUDING ranger PETS). Test it? Its like Benny Hill show intro last night. Thief stealth, pet runs around chasingf invisible thief, pouncing and stunning said thief, thief out of stealth, stunned, lol. Even whe the pet cant find the thief immediately, it jumps on him very fast again, because culling doesnt affect NPC’s :-) Maybe not a great patch specifically for the ranger class, but a huge buff versus thieves.

Haven’t had a chance to play anything since the patch went live, but if this is true, it sure sounds like a very good change. Probably too good, so they’ll most likely “fix” it somehow…

Just change the mechanic to work like it does for thieves – replace the F2 with the item and let us use it on demand while still being able to attack stuff.

I can understand when it comes to the other shouts, but for Sick’em I would hope this is considered a bug that will be fixed.

I like to jump from the treb over the wall, great when you need to escape from enemies. Doable with both the sword and gs.

capuchinseven.8395:

As pointed out though, BM specs loose a lot of DPS because of this.

Actually, all ranger specs loose a lot of dps if you’re forced to try and keep your pet passive, and you’re at a major disadvantage vs the thief for doing so, and at a major disadvantage if you try to use your pet on him as well – kitten if you, kitten if you don’t.

We’re balanced with the pet, you shouldn’t be able to take out a cloak and dagger thief at all if you don’t use your pet, if both players are of equal skill.

There are three major issues here:

- Cloak and dagger being able to gain stealth from pets
- Pets being so unresponsive to attack when the thief leaves stealth
- The time it takes for you to retarget the thief, while the thief on the other hand keeps you targeted all the time

Can we beat them? Of course, but the mechanics of the thief class annoys me like no other thing I’ve ever come across in any mmo before.

Yeah, it’s buggy like hell, and you have to position yourself perfectly to use it, it seems. Still good fun when it works though!

:)

Mostly thieves yes, but I guess that class caters for a special type of players a lot more than the other classes, and when they get stomped, it’s like somebody snatched their candy…
Collected quite a few screenshots by now with people typing stupid comments and whispers, and I’d say 4 out 5 are from thieves, lol!

:)

Don’t worry about it, it’s just Anets vision of balance and how things should be, I wouldn’t expect this to ever change.

Nice video, thumbs up from me!

:)

Kage.2389:

I can evade for pretty close to a minute straight, and with the correct procs have fought 5 people underwater for 3 minutes 37 seconds straight, before killing two and chasing the rest off of ruins.

This right here just screams how incredibly annyoing (and op) this is, and here ppl are complaining about ranger downed state, ROFL.

Devs, open your eyes kitten

If the F2 mechanic can me made ‘smoother’ when it comes to these critters, I just might start using them. Tried’em somewhat in pvp, the knockdown is great, and the F2 is good in theory, but too clumsy. Dps is too low.

Lorelei.3918:

Got 20k hp, 36% crit, 3000 power and 3100 armor.

What armor and jewelry are you using for those stats? Looks very interesting, so if you’d like to share I’d appreciate it!

Ditch Master’s Bond. Imho, you’ll get more use out of constantly swapping pets and using their skills and gaining quickness. There are too many drawbacks with the current mechanic of Master’s Bond to be worth it, and you’ll always have that feeling “ kitten I had to swap pets again!”.

Considering the higher power of canines vs felines, it would be interesting to see what the result would be with more or less constant fury up from warhorn and weapon swap!

1. skill for rangers are good, but here are the major drawbacks:

• On land, it bugs so often it’s not even funny. I can guarantee you that 3 out of 4 times in pvp, the skill bugs out and the pet stands next to you doing nothing (some pets are worse than others for some odd reason, another bug with the skill)

• You have to wait – what, 8, 10 seconds before you can even activate the skill. 9 out 10 times you’ll get stomped long before that, or stomped during the res phase

• In water it’s powerful, but that has more to do with the lack of a stomping ability underwater, and in general far lower dps for all classes – therein lies the problem with underwater combat, not this particular skill

If anything, the ever evading thief is the biggest annoyance of all while under water – how the hell did they come up with that bright idea?

Ayestes.1273:

There seems to be some confusion here.

I’ve had many instances where the pet is dead and the Ranger is regenerating health extremely rapidly underwater. It is impossible to CC a Pet that is dead.

This is a bug that needs to be fixed. I’d have no problem with it if the Pet was alive and able to be stopped through either damage or control.

Honestly the only things that upset me underwater are Thieves and drowning Rangers, simply because they take forever to kill. This is coming from an Engineer underwater, which is frankly overpowered underwater.

It is not a bug.

If you were only to kill the pet to stop lick wounds from working, you might as well get rid of the skill all together.

Pets are supposed to be able to res, even when downed.

Sansar.1302:

you know that reg tics way faster than 1 per sec ?

Source?

*

According to wiki, the forumula for regeneration is:

5 + (1.5625 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second

At level 80 this is:
130 + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second

So with 1000 healing power:

130 + (0.125 * 1000) = 255 health/second

Infectious.4836:

Still super lols when its 4(me and 2 friends + random) v 5 full team and winning.

Well, you do realise that spvp often is a playground for trying out new builds, professions or even try out pvp for the first time?

I think the “lols” are on you on this one my friend, if you think that just because you’re one down you’re super skilled for winning a match in spvp?

Dahkeus.8243:

- Finally, they have equal power, toughness, and precision to a cat, but also have higher vitality, so they are more durable.

So the stat page says, and many bring this argument. Yet, I find that birds die a lot easier/faster than my cats, for some odd reason. This holds true in both pvp and pve. Can’t really tell why this seems to be the case, but for me, that’s been my experience all along, and I played a lot with my ranger.

This bug is seriously starting to freak me out. You don’t have to be on uneven ground, this skill simply lets me down so many times in spvp I’ve lost count. I swear it works at most 1 time out of 10.

Really Anet devs – can you please fix this skill? It’s beyond frustrating having the pet run over to you, and then just standing there. It could have saved me many times over if it would just work.

Just wondering if this is a new phenomena – “organized” teams joining for some spvp action, switching teams to stay on the same side?

Haven’t really seen it before, but it’s become decently common lately. Lack of organized tpvp games to join I guess.

And yes, they crush the opposition when facing a bunch of single players joining a spvp game. Interesting to face though, it’s a whole new game when it happens!

jcbroe.4329:

No problem. The way I understand the choice to go 30 into BM is for the extra healing from Natural Healing and the 300 total points in healing. However, what many people fail to realize is that, along with not gaining much DPS on the pet overall (it is only 300 points total to each of their attributes, is isn’t doing as much as people think. Reference: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/79991-beastmastery-math-breakdown/)

Another thing they don’t realize is that with 0/0/30/25/15 you gain +15% more boon duration and +1500 health. This actually works to directly increase survival better than the 0/0/30/10/30 version.

Just food for though, I’m glad you are enjoying your build and success with everybody. Hope you keep having fun (a lot of the community is jaded right now, it’s good to see people still having fun and success).

I’m not really sure that the 0/0/30/25/15 is hands down better than 0/0/30/10/30 when it comes to survival.

Some things to consider when comparing these two builds:

• How does the Bountiful Hunter trait compare to Nature’s Wrath trait for damage?
• How much survivability/added damage can Fortifying Bond bring to your pet?
• How big of an impact does loosing out on the second major BM trait bring?
• 1500 more health vs 150 more healing power? 1500 more health = a bigger buffer, but loosing out on regen from the signet + lower heals/regeneration
• Survivability/damage of pets?

Ryan.8367:

I find it funny when thieves come in here and complain. Thief, a class that isn’t too used to having to adapt to other overpowered classes… See that’s the difference between the ranger and a thief. We have to constantly tweak our kitten left and right to evade all the op bullkitten alot of other classes get. We have one thing you don’t like and it gives you a challenge and if you lose to it , you cry nerf. But we as rangers deal wit h hat everyday, that is nothing new to us. We adapt and learn how to counter. Finally get a counter and you folks cry for nerf… It’s just too hilarious.

But yea, if you give a thief or any other class who is used to winning (because their builds are op as kitten) a challenge and end up killing him , be prepared for a plethora of ‘nerf!’ calls.

That is funny to me, probably to a bunch of other rangers in here as well.

If only you’d know how true this is.

I’ve gotten whispers from thieves in spvp that said they’re going to report me for cheating, since I beat them. Well of course, if a ranger beats a thief, there must be cheating involved, right?
I could post some hilarious screenshots, but I think I’ll just skip that!

awge.3852:

Keeping ‘guard’ skill might be useful since your pet will react to the thief when he pops out of stealth.

Another major flaw with pet ai – vs a cloak and dagger thief, getting your pet to react before the thief vanishes in stealth again… gha, the annoyance.
We shouldn’t need to bring the guard skill just to cover up for faulty ai. Having to have that skill equipped just so that the pet should realise that “ah, look, my target has returned, maybe I should attack?” just points to a broken game mechanic.

Response time of pets need to improve tenfold.

How it should work (with wolf as an example):

Thief appears from stealth – bam – gets knocked down instantly by the wolf. No more standing around trying to figure out whether to attack in the first place, and after that having a long wind-up time to actually activate the skill. By that time, the thief (in this case) is most likely back in stealth.

nerva.7940:

jkctmc.8754:

This is what a good Thief looks like, and how noobish he makes the Ranger class look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHOpACoX4ic

where do i begin?

1. it takes him 5 minutes to down a scrub sword ranger with a little bit of vigor and a few points in wilderness. that ranger btw uses a drake. lulz. i wonder how he would feel about a perma vigor / near-perma prot sword/dagger ranger…hmmm.

2. culling is culling. he is always able to get off 2-3 hits (about 2 seconds) before even rendering. great work ANet. sucks for about 80% of the wvw population who cant pvp.

3. when i play MY ranger, any thief bladestorming is essentially committing suicide. because what usually follows is muddy terrain, burning, double bird burst, and if i feel like it, spike trap + daze followed by 8-10 stacks of bleeds, poison and more fire for good measure. thats 1v1. in a smaller group, glass cannon thieves dont even get to duel me because my hammer warr buddy has already slammed him to the ground. so, bladestorming thieves go severely punished on my watch and i usually brighten up when i see one popping it

4. true, rangers cant do what he does. kind of impossible without at least one on-demand invis. but it needs to be emphasized that CnD chaining is a low skillcap procedure that is made even easier by culling. this type of gameplay is indeed fun to watch, but only because people are completely clueless. it’s a borderline exploit that can actually be easily countered.

5. rangers are meant to tank because they cant drop targets. if you dont evade/prot/regen tank your ranger, you will get crushed not only by thieves but by mesmers, condi necros, and berserker warriors – all of which do your “glass cannon” job much better than you. how many rangers in that vid are built correctly for the meta? it’s a sad sight, but how is “none” for an answer?

True, but that video still pisses me off because of how many tools and high damage is available to the thief class. A few slashes and ppl drop to the left and right, and they have so many escape abilities it’s not even funny.

No other class can do stuff like this.